Saturday, June 6, 2015

It's Music To Our Fears!

According to a recent article in the Minneapolis
StarTribune, a graduating senior at the University of Minnesota has translated
global temperature data into music.
He took the coldest year in Minnesota history, 1883, and assigned it a musical
note. He then did the same with the average annual temperature for every year
since 1880 in the four northern regions of the globe. Voila’…”climate change
for a string quartet.”

Apparently,
the composition, “Planetary Bands, Warming World,” starts low and ends up high,
“especially the violin that plays the music of the Arctic region, which is
warming faster than the rest of the world.” The article goes on to state that
“the average annual temperature for the 44th-through 64th-degree
latitudes, which includes Minnesota, peaked at 36.1 degrees in 2007. As
transcribed for the piece, it is two octaves higher than the corresponding 1883
temperature.” It does not say what the temperature trend has been after that.

The
string quartet, again according to the article, is the senior’s “second climate
change composition. The first one, completed in 2013 at the suggestion of a
professor, also played across the world and was picked up by the Weather
Channel and the Dot Earth blog in the New York Times.” That one was called, “A
Song of Our Warming Planet.” The article deemed it, “a rare marriage of science
and art.” Admittedly, it was not a great piece of music. The student himself
said in an interview that musicians complained “that it wasn’t very musical.”
He went on to state, “It got the point across-it was really scary to listen
to.” Really scary to listen to? Was it that stupendously awful, or are we
just that soft, gullible, ignorant and craven?

The
student’s climatology professor, who came up with the idea in the first place,
called the apparently sad, discordant composition an excellent teaching tool,
and a way to express climate change “without defaulting to some guy in front of
a slide showing a graph.”

I
propose we start taking lots of mathematical data, previously illustrated by
graphs and the like, and put it to music. The government’s debt, for example,
could be incorporated into a funeral dirge. The number of illegal immigrants
poring over our southern border over the years could be accurately illustrated
by an opus with rising crescendo. Allegro, allegro, presto!

The
article went on to opine that this second composition “tells an equally
important but more complex story about the warming world.” And that vital and labyrinthine tale is…?
“That different regions of the globe are experiencing climate change
differently.” Really? I mean, really??!!!
Talk about stating the obvious. There has never been a time in the history of
this planet, with or without homo sapiens, that this hasn’t been the case! It’s
been really warm in India recently. Much of the central and eastern U.S. has
been much colder than normal of late.
Is it even possible to experience climate change
on a consistent, regular, harmonious, uniform, homogenous basis around the
planet? Is that not oxymoronic? That would be real climate change...and
extremely unnerving. After all, change is the only constant. (Okay, besides death and taxes).

The
student says he would eventually like to go to graduate school to study climate
change, but for now wants to find a job and save some money, “and give my brain
a break.”

And
ours.

Ears,
too.

**************************************************************

The
rapidly changing nature of change is changing things at changing rates around
the world! That’s scary!!

Daily Trivia Quiz Answer

Today's Answer: Andrew Jackson. ("Poll" got so worked up before the service he apparently had to be removed from the premises, as he was cussing long and loud).

Q) What words appear on the front of the penny, nickel, dime and quarter, alongside the likeness of presidents?

A) "Liberty" and "In God We Trust"

An Ode To Life

Appreciate all you have, as it- and you- will soon be gone. Leave no heartfelt words unspoken, no sweet gesture incomplete, no act of love undone. Love your spouse with passion and abandon, your kids with patience and understanding but also a firm guidance. Love also the truth, no matter how hard. If pursued by enough people with enough courage, it really will set us free.

And don't forget, we didn't ask to be born. We didn't create ourselves. We are not gods. There is a higher power.

Fireworks of the Mind

Write It Up

Whence Shall Come Another?

True Then, True Now

"If you will not fight for right when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory is sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves."- Winston Churchill

Time Well Wasted

The power lies within your hands To do with what you may But the hourglass is filled with sands Of endless yesterdays